“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
This is the famous quote attributed to Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine. Never would he have considered that food was anything but medicine.
This often-repeated phrase has lost meaning and context for most because of its repetition and the passage of time. But what does it mean? My invitation and journey to a meeting on the clinical use of fecal transplantation (FmT) reset the meaning in my mind, hopefully in yours, and the potential impact of the immune system on cancer care today and in the future.
You might ask how these two, food as medicine and FmT, are connected, and how that impacts you? Though connected, they exist as polar opposites.
Dr. Williams and I were asked to share our experience and insights on fecal transplantation in cancer treatment at a scientific advisory board meeting. Cancer demographics are rapidly changing. Currently, 40% of cancers are obesity. The lead author of the Prospective and Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, published in the Lancet journal in 2019, Dr. Latha Palaniappan, described it best:
“We are seeing a new epidemiological transition…from heart disease to cancer as the leading cause of death, which is occurring first in high-income communities.”
Cancer has long been described as a disease of the older, the aged—those in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. More and more, cancer is a disease of younger age. Though the use of aged was always correct, it was not the decades of life of the individual that elicited cancer risk; it was the aged cells, the increasing accumulation of aged cells.
So, why the shift? Why the changing demographics? To answer these questions, Ann Wigmore adds modern context to the famous Hippocrates quote that began this blog post:
“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”
-Ann Wigmore
What Ann Wigmore, the pioneer nutritionist, added to the famous Hippocrates quote was that what once was food to fuel the body and soul to live healthy and well has now become a poison that damages the body, destroys the soul, and propagates disease. The very fuel that seeds life has become the fuel that seeds disease.
The seeding begins with the mother’s microbiome, which she inherited from her mother, continues with her diet during pregnancy, and continues with birth and breastfeeding. It is a seeding event that reprograms the gut microbiome and the immune system to create an axis of disease:
- GUT-IMMUNE-TUMOR axis
- GUT-LIVER-TUMOR-IMMUNE axis
- MICROBIOTA-METABOLISM-OBESITY
I will discuss these connections in another post, but for now, let us focus on how current practices are impacting our health.
We have turned our food into poison.
A poison is something delivered with the intention of corruption or evil. Here, the very thing food is designed to fuel our bodies for optimal performance is corrupted, damaging, and destroying the immune system, leaving lifelong disease impacts. All disease is impacted through corruption, but my focus is on the impact of cancer because it carries one of the greatest burdens of morbidity and mortality.
You may say, “Now, Dr. Goodyear, that is hyperbole.” Why would the government, policy makers, and corporations poison citizens, voters, and customers, and allow the food supply to be turned into poison? At its origins, it is simple ignorance. Ignorance, whether via commission or omission, is still ignorance and not acceptable. And yes, there are those in power who have known the harms for many decades and have sought to hide them from the public’s eyes, ears, and minds. Why? Power and profits over physicians and ultimately patients. Science can be used to convey the truth of these words through descriptions and discussions of the mechanisms.
I have recently highlighted the accumulation of damage and dangers of industrialized agriculture. I even spoke on this topic at a conference that brought together physicians, farmers, advocates, and policymakers. Words without facts, words without science, are merely hyperbole. These facts and this science underscore the significance of this meeting and the gut microbiome and fecal transplant for the future of immunotherapy, cancer care, and beyond.
Born without Bifidobacterium, raised for disease
The recent highlights from the My Baby Biome research provide the facts. Moreover, it displays the mechanisms. The My Baby Biome project is set to span seven years and began with the recruitment of children aged three to seven months. The recently published update was intended to provide transparency on two-year data. What was found and reported hits at the heart of the problem. The authors reported that the gut microbiome lacked the Bifidobacterium genus in 25% of the children followed. That is an extinction event within the gut microbiome of an entire bacterial genus in a quarter of U.S. children. Extinction has been deferred to the animal kingdom, yet here it applies to our children’s gut microbiome. Worse, and yes, it can get worse, 92% of the children had significantly decreased Bifidobacterium infantis. Overall, 87% of children’s gut microbiomes at 2 years had significantly reduced or absent Bifidobacterium.
The impact on cancer is clear. Numerous studies indicate that decreased levels of the gut microbiome Bifidobacterium are associated with increased cancer risk.
What a healthy gut microbiome is, is debatable, and if that is even definable is a topic for another day and post. Declining Bifidobacterium is implicated in the following cancer types, whether in association, causation, or treatment response:
- Colorectal
- Gastric
- Hepatocellular (liver)
- Ovarian
- Breast
- Lung
- Pancreatic
The equally negative metabolic impacts that result from the gut microbiome disruption, dysbiosis, are connected directly with changing cancer demographics found in obesity related cancers:
Think
“The world as we have created it is a process of our own thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
—Albert Einstein
In the medical and scientific world, we cannot look to those who created the problem as the source for solutions to the problem. Those who have created the current dominating disease model require conformity of thought. Our environment is, in part, a process of their thinking. We need a break from the conformity of thought. Innovation is paramount to produce change. A return to critical thinking and creative thinking is desperately needed to break thought conformity and pivot from disease to health and healing. Together, we can create that new, brighter, healthier tomorrow.
Sources
Nelson, M. R. (2017, October 4). Obesity-related cancers increasing in the US. American Institute for Cancer Research. Retrieved from https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/obesity-related-cancers-increasing-in-the-us/
Jarman, J.B., Torres, P.J., Stromberg, S. et al. Bifidobacterium deficit in United States infants drives prevalent gut dysbiosis. Commun Biol 8, 867 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-08274-7
Sharma D, Gajjar D, Seshadri S. Understanding the role of gut microfloral bifidobacterium in cancer and its potential therapeutic applications. Microbiome Res Rep. 2024;3:3.
Do H, Asiamah E, Olorife M, Pillai A, Patel S, Selvakumar P, Ray SD, Lakshmikuttyamma A. Mechanism of anticancer action of bifidobacterium: Insights from gut microbiota. Oncotarget. 2025 Nov 14;16:818-833.
Hizo, G. H., & Rampelotto, P. H. (2023). The Role of Bifidobacterium in Liver Diseases: A Systematic Review of Next-Generation Sequencing Studies. Microorganisms, 11(12), 2999.
Liu Y, Ning H, Li Y, Li Y, Ma J. The microbiota in breast cancer: dysbiosis, microbial metabolites, and therapeutic implications. Am J Cancer Res. 2025 Apr 15;15(4):1384-1409.
Song Q, Li X, Li Q, Shang S, Ma S, Zhai Z, Sun F, Mo Y, Wei L, Wu M, Ma Y, Yu J, Chen D. Bifidobacterium animalis suppresses non-small cell lung cancer progression and modulates tumor immunity through indole-3-acetic acid. Cell Rep. 2025 Aug 26;44(8):116132.